Ivan Kruglikov

Born February 21, 1946, in West London, England, Alan Rickman showed an early penchant for the performing arts. He cut his teeth as an actor in 1978, when he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. He earned a Tony Award nomination as the star of 1988's Les Liaisons Dangereuses, then came to American consciousness that same year as terrorist Hans Gruber in the big-screen blockbuster Die Hard. His film credits include the notable Harry Potter series, as well as Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) and Alice in Wonderland (2010). Rickman died of cancer on January 14, 2016.

Frankenheimer's 30 feature films and over 50 plays for television were notable for their influence on contemporary thought. He became a pioneer of the "modern-day political thriller", having begun his career at the height of the Cold War.

Richard Nathaniel Wright was an American author of novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially related to the plight of African Americans during the late 19th to mid-20th centuries suffering discrimination and violence. Literary critics believe his work helped change race relations in the United States in the mid-20th century.

Richard J. Roberts was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Phillip Allen Sharp for the discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism of gene-splicing. He currently works at New England Biolabs.